Via my window manager, I have bound a key to switch my keymap. It
causes a script to be run which calls 'xmodmap'. However, I often get
errors such as:

xmodmap:  please release the following keys within 4 seconds:
    Control_L (keysym 0xffe3, keycode 64)

This is because I often start typing something after switching the
keymap (after all, I only switch the keymap when I want to type), and
for some reason X doesn't like having modifiers depressed when
remapping them. If X could be fixed to not do this, it would be great.

Otherwise, perhaps the timeout in xmodmap could be reduced - currently
the minimum is 2 seconds, but it is doubled each time. I think much
smaller values, and no doubling, would be preferable, since those
delays affect the user directly.

Frederik Eaton wrote:

Hi,

I understand your concern, but I would rather have upstream's opinion
about this. The 2s timeout might be here because under some
circumstances (maybe an overloaded slow old machine?) remapping may be
very long to process. However, this code hasn't been changed since April
1994 (initial commit in XFree86 CVS), so it's not clear whether those
circumstances could happen today :)

Would you mind asking upstream either on IRC (#xorg-devel on freenode),
or on xorg@lists.freedesktop.org (subscription required), or by
reporting a bug on bugzilla.freedesktop.org?

Thanks,
Brice

Hello Frederik,

3 years ago you filled the following bug:

Then Brice Goglin suggested:

I looked on bugzilla.freedesktop.org and couldn't find any reference,
what is the status of this bug today ?

Do you still experience it ?

Best Regards,

I just ran xmodmap, and the behavior seems to be still unchanged. I
don't remember resubmitting the bug anywhere else, I guess I figured
that there ought to be some standard way to push the bug upstream if
it passed muster with Debian. Not that I should (or do) mind being
contacted by upstream people who want more information, I was just too
lazy to create an account with Xorg's bug tracker...

As for "do I still experience it", the answer is no - I no longer use
a key binding, but a menu item (in the Ion window manager), so I am
pressing only 'return' and no modifiers are held down when xmodmap is
executed.

Thanks,

Frederik